Virtual reality (VR) applications are becoming more mainstream, moving from specialized hardware architectures to conventional desktops through devices like the Oculus VR headsets. VR headsets utilize different views projected to different eyes of the user to create the illusion of depth. Like conventional computer applications, image data for display on these devices may be generated in real-time through various applications. A graphics processing unit (GPU) or other specialized graphics hardware may be utilized by the application in order to process more complex geometry in order to create more realistic images.
A GPU may implement at least part of a graphics processing pipeline in order to efficiently process three-dimensional graphics data in order to generate pixel data to be displayed on the display device. Traditionally, primitive data (i.e., data for a model to be rendered) is input into the top of the graphics processing pipeline. The primitive data is sequentially processed through a number of stages of the graphics processing pipeline, which eventually converts the primitive data into pixel data that defines a specific image of the model from a particular virtual camera position. Because stereoscopic images like the ones displayed in VR headsets require two different views generated from two different camera positions, two different images must be generated by the graphics processing pipeline. Conventionally, generating two views from different virtual camera positions would require the application to input the primitive data for the model into the graphics processing pipeline twice—once for each view. However, inputting the primitive data into the graphics processing pipeline twice requires approximately twice the time to process the data and generate two views. Generating multi-view image data in this manner is inefficient as many stages of the graphics processing pipeline may be performing the same calculations twice. Thus, there is a need for addressing these issues and/or other issues associated with the prior art.